One day I was looking at how many messages I have in my sent mail, and realized there are a lot of things I wanted to know about my email habits. How much of my emails do I read, and do I reply fast enough? As luck would have it, Romain Vialard, a Google Apps Script Top Contributor, developed a tool called Gmail Meter powered by Google Apps Script.

Gmail Meter is an Apps Script which runs on the first day of every month and sends you an email containing different statistics about your Inbox. In a similar way to how recently introduced Google Account Activity gives key stats about how you’ve used your Google Account, Gmail Meter gives you different types of statistics that will help you analyze your Gmail habits.

Volume Statistics show you the number of important and starred messages, the number of people who sent you emails, and more. Volume statistics can be very useful in determining how you are using email efficiency tools like Priority Inbox.

Daily Traffic gives you an estimate of when you receive messages and when you send them during a given month. For example, in the graph below you can see how the peaks in my “Sent” curve indicates that I write emails in spurts.

Traffic Pattern lets you get a sense of your overall email activity over the past week.

Email Categories tells you how you are managing your Inbox. In the pie chart below, you can see that the majority of my emails are labeled. My Inbox is tiny compared to other labels which indicates that I keep a lean and mean Inbox.

Time Before First Response shows you how long it takes you to reply, and how long it takes others to reply to you. By looking at this chart, I can infer that I reply faster than others I communicate with.

Word Count tells you whether you are writing long emails. The example below shows that most of my emails are shorter than 200 words.

Thread Lengths help you understand whether you participate in long conversations resulting in long threads. Top Senders and Top Recipients help you identify who you communicate with more frequently.

How to Setup Gmail Meter

It is easy to set up Gmail Meter. First, go to Google Docs and open a Spreadsheet. Click on Tools > Script Gallery. Search for “Gmail Meter” and click Install. You will now see a new menu item called Gmail Meter on your spreadsheet. Click on Gmail Meter > Get a Report. You can then choose the type of report. Preparing a report may take some time and you will get an email once the report is ready. If you would like to know more about how this script works, be sure to check this tutorial.

Learning about my email habits has helped me become more email efficient. So, before you read that next article on “Writing Effective Emails,” be sure to learn more about your own email habits using Gmail Meter.

The QWERTY keyboard was invented in 1874 and yet it is still used today, largely unchanged. Today we’re excited to introduce a new input method designed for the future: Gmail Tap for Android and iOS. Watch the video for an overview:

Gmail Tap takes the keyboard from 26 keys to just two. Every letter of the alphabet is represented by a simple pattern of dots and dashes, and once you know them you can type without even looking at your screen. This makes it ideal for situations where you need to discreetly send emails, such as when you’re on a date or in a meeting with your boss.

We’re also introducing a new mode, multi-email. Double your productivity by typing multiple emails at once:

Many of our users say the accuracy of our spam filter is one of the key reasons they love Gmail. And while we think you should never have to look in your spam folder, we know some of you may want to know why the messages there were marked as spam.

So starting today, we’ll be showing a brief explanation at the top of each of your spam messages. Simply look at any message in your spam folder and now you can find out why it was put there and learn about any potentially harmful content within the message.We hope that this is not only interesting, but also helps you learn about scams and other harmful messages that Gmail filters out. Whether you prefer to leave your spam folder untouched or do some educational digging, the information will be there for you. And if you’re interested in learning more, check out our new series of spam articles in the Gmail help center.

Have you ever sent an important email that you wanted to follow up on, but a couple days later realized you hadn’t? Starting today, you can organize your messages before sending them by starring them or adding a label, making it easy to keep track of your sent messages.

When composing a new message, you can assign labels or star it by using the labels drop-down menu. As you’d expect, recipients of messages organized this way won’t see your labels or stars.

The Gmail Forum is a place where you can discuss Gmail, get advice, and help each other out. Recently, we’ve celebrated two major events.

First forum poster to hit 100,000 answers

Everyone needs a little help occasionally, and many of us get a warm, fuzzy feeling when we’re able to provide assistance to someone in need. Brett, or “bkc56” on the forum, has helped so many people he must be on fire! The Gmail team is thrilled to congratulate Brett on becoming the first person to post 100,000 answers in any of our forums.

To celebrate, we invited Brett to come by the Google offices in Mountain View for lunch and a day with the team. While he was here, Brett shared his insights on Gmail, the forum, and the Gmail community; those he met with described his observations as “brilliant” and “invaluable.” He met with Googlers in many different roles, from support specialists and engineers to vice presidents. We learned a lot from speaking with Brett and we are all very grateful that he shared his time with us.

Brett is one of our Top Contributors, the forum volunteers who are especially knowledgeable and helpful. Remember to say “thanks” if you see them around the forum. Want to lend a hand yourself? Brett suggests “Find a question where you know the answer and post it. Everyone starts with just one helpful post. Perhaps you’ll enjoy it and do another, and another, and…”

Launch of the new forum interface
Right on the heels of Brett’s achievement, we launched a new interface for the Gmail Forum, powered by Google Groups. The update brings new features, including “me too” voting, rich text posts and editing, and easy sharing on Google+. Stop by and check it out, whether you have a question or just want to chat.

I used to avoid clicking on email links on the web because an application on my computer that I never used would pop up and interrupt me. Instead, I would copy the email address, switch to Gmail, click compose and paste it in.

Starting today, thanks to the magic of HTML5 things are getting simpler. Now, when you go to Gmail in Chrome, you will be asked if you want Gmail to open all email links. Say yes, and clicking on email links in any application on your computer will open a fresh Gmail compose window.

Email phishing, in which someone tries to trick you into revealing personal information by sending fake emails that look legitimate, remains one of the biggest online threats. One of the most popular methods that scammers employ is something called domain spoofing. With this technique, someone sends a message that seems legitimate when you look at the “From” line even though it’s actually a fake. Email phishing is costing regular people and companies millions of dollars each year, if not more, and in response, Google and other companies have been talking about how we can move beyond the solutions we’ve developed individually over the years to make a real difference for the whole email industry.

Industry groups come and go, and it’s not always easy to tell at the beginning which ones are actually going to generate good solutions. When the right contributors come together to solve real problems, though, real things happen. That’s why we’re particularly optimistic about today’s announcement of DMARC.org, a passionate collection of companies focused on significantly cutting down on email phishing and other malicious mail.

Building upon the work of previous mail authentication standards like SPF and DKIM, DMARC is responding to domain spoofing and other phishing methods by creating a standard protocol by which we’ll be able to measure and enforce the authenticity of emails. With DMARC, large email senders can ensure that the email they send is being recognized by mail providers like Gmail as legitimate, as well as set policies so that mail providers can reject messages that try to spoof the senders’ addresses.

We’ve been active in the leadership of the DMARC group for almost two years, and now that Gmail and several other large mail senders and providers — namely Facebook, LinkedIn, and PayPal — are actively using the DMARC specification, the road is paved for more members of the email ecosystem to start getting a handle on phishing. Our recent data indicates that roughly 15% of non-spam messages in Gmail are already coming from domains protected by DMARC, which means Gmail users like you don’t need to worry about spoofed messages from these senders. The phishing potential plummets when the system just works, and that’s what DMARC provides.

If you’re a large email sender and you want to try out the DMARC specification, you can learn more at the DMARC website. Even if you’re not ready to take on the challenge of authenticating all your outbound mail just yet, there’s no reason to not sign up to start receiving reports of mail that fraudulently claims to originate from your address. With further adoption of DMARC, we can all look forward to a more trustworthy overall experience with email.

When we first announced Gmail offline last August, we told you that it was only the beginning of our HTML5-powered offline journey. Since then, we’ve been listening to your feedback and today, we want to let you know about some of the key updates we’ve made to the Chrome Web Store app.

The first update – and a personal favorite of the team- is the addition of a settings page (look for the new settings icon). You can now choose whether you want to synchronize 7, 14 or 31 days worth of mail. So the next time you get on an airplane, you can sit back and tackle up to 31 days of mail all while offline.

We’ve also made a number of other updates to Gmail offline:

Improved attachments: All attachments are now downloaded and available for offline use

Keyboard shortcuts support: If you have keyboard shortcuts enabled in Gmail, your setting will transfer over to the Gmail offline app. If you’re not sure what you can do with keyboard shortcuts, try pressing ‘?’ next time you’re using Gmail or Gmail offline.

Numerous performance enhancements: Messages and attachments now download at a faster rate and some bugs have been fixed.

If you haven’t tried it already, you can install the Gmail offline app from the Chrome Web Store. If you’re already using Gmail offline, you’ll see these improvements the next time you open the app. To get the best experience using Gmail offline, please make sure you are using the latest version of Chrome as some features may not work on older versions.

Last Friday Santa opened up the Ho Ho Hotline and teamed up with Gmail to send personalized holiday phone calls to anyone you know who has been nice (or naughty, for that matter) in the U.S. or Canada. In just a few days Santa has made hundreds of thousands of calls to your friends, family and loved ones, and received many a message from you at his Google Voice number (855-34-SANTA).

Santa has one more surprise in store. Starting today, anyone in the world can create and send a personalized cartoon video message (in English only) from Santa to anyone you know, anywhere in the world, and share them through email and Google+. Watch our sample video below and create your own at SendaCallFromSanta.com.